Medical School Performance Evaluation (MSPE)
- Mohammed Kamareddine
- Feb 15, 2021
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 16, 2021
The MSPE is a summary letter of evaluation intended to provide residency program directors an honest and objective summary of a medical student’s salient experiences, attributes, and academic performance during medical school. It is one of the most important documents you will need to apply for a residency position through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) is the Medical School Performance Evaluation (MSPE). In the past, this document was referred to as the “Deans Letter”.
Why is the MSPE important for the application?
The MSPE allows program directors and faculty members learn more about your performance during medical school. Outside of your Step scores, this is one of the most objective indicators as it will showcase your academic performance, experiences, awards and other accomplishments. The MSPE also allows programs to know more about how you performed in medical school compared to your colleagues. This comparison with other students is perhaps the most important part of the MSPE as programs can gain insights with tangible and objective data about each applicant and how they did during their medical school. A detailed breakdown of how you did during your hospital rotations including grades, residents/attending evaluations, and how you did compared to your classmates on each rotation will be provided. Therefore, this means that you should try to do your best on every rotation because in the end, every little thing counts. Your medical school will provide programs with a large amount of information in the form of written statements, graphs, charts, and tables.
The aim of the AAMC is to standardize the MSPE for all the medical schools regardless of location. So regardless of where you go to for medical school, it would still have all the important information regarding your performance and how it compared to your classmates.
Here’s a graphic from the 2018 NRMP Program Director Survey on factors influencing selecting applicant for interviews. The MSPE is 3rd highest on that list and we've higlighted other important factors that will be discussed in your MSPE.
As you can see, the MSPE is pretty important for your application.
As an IMG, you are likely responsible for asking your medical school for an MSPE. If your school has experience with graduates pursuing their residency training in the States, this should be relatively easy. If they don't have experience in this area of the application, we have laid out the AAMC's recommended structure for an MSPE, formatting, and how to upload it to ERAS. You can send them all the guidelines mentioned in this post if that may help. Your medical school administrators will handle all aspects of crafting the MSPE with the exception of noteworthy or unique characteristics mentioned in the beginning of the MSPE.
To give you a better idea of what an MSPE looks like, we have added the recommended MSPE structure below with an explanation for each element and examples when needed.
School of Medicine
Date
IDENTIFYING INFORMATION
Student information: legal name and AAMC ID#.
Medical school information: name, location, and any other pertinent identifying information.
NOTEWORTHY OR UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS
Provide a maximum of three characteristics highlighting the most salient noteworthy characteristics of the student. This section should be presented as a bulleted list. Each characteristic should be described in 2 sentences or less. Information about any significant challenges or hardships encountered by the student during medical school may be included.
Characteristic number one.
Characteristic number two.
Characteristic number three.
ACADEMIC HISTORY
ACADEMIC PROGRESS
Professional Performance
Describe how the medical school defines professionalism and what it assesses in students. Whenever possible, areas of strength and weakness should be addressed.
Preclinical Coursework
If preclinical courses are graded as Pass/Fail, the MSPE should convey that the student has met all requirements. Whenever possible, areas of strength and weakness should be addressed.
Clerkships (in chronological order)
The components of each clerkship grade and the weight of each component (for example, % clinical assessment, % shelf exam, % case write-up, % OSCE, etc.) should be included to better inform program directors on performance. Whenever possible, areas of strength and weakness should be addressed. Clerkship evaluations are a crucial piece of information for program directors and are considered by many to be the most important section of the MSPE in determining applicants for interview selection and rank order list.
NOTE: The graphs included in this template are meant only as examples. Schools should use their own grading systems or schemes in their graphs depicting comparative student performance.
Your performance for each clerkship will be discussed individually like the example shown below:
Pediatrics (July 24, 2019 - September 17, 2019) Grade: Honors
Overall grade based on: Oral examination (30%), Clinical evaluations: 30%, NBME exam (40%)
During his/her rotation in the Department of Pediatrics, Dr. X Y had an excellent performace. His supervising residents described him as "an excellent student, very creative and interested, with excellent patient management, he was a pleasure to have on the service". The attending physician described him as "smart, mature, and applied. He has an excellent knowledge base and will become a superb doctor"
SUMMARY
The Task Force recommends providing a summative assessment, based upon the school’s evaluation system, of the student’s comparative performance in medical school, relative to their peers. Schools should include information about any school-specific categories used in differentiating among levels of student performance. This may, though does not have to, include graphic representation of the student’s performance relative to their class overall.
My medical school, for example, added a graph that showed your academic standing in terms of class quartile for each year of medical school.
MSPE FORMATTING:
If your medical school follows the recommendations mentioned earlier, your letter should be ready to be sent to ECFMG or ERAS. The following are the formatting requirements:
The document must be in Portable Document Format (PDF) and unlocked.
The maximum file size accepted is 1,200 KB; the maximum image size accepted is 300 dots per inch (dpi).
The dimensions of each page cannot exceed 8.5 by 14 inches.
All pages of the document must be scanned in as one file. Do not upload pages separately. Do not include any other document besides the MSPE letter like your medical diploma, CV, etc.
If the file size is too large, you can always compress the PDF size using a website like SmallPDF.
The following MSPE samples are directly from the AAMC and therefore can be used as a template:
HOW TO UPLOAD THE MSPE IN ECFMG/ERAS:
To upload your MSPE in ECFMG and therefore ERAS, please follow the next steps:
Go to ECFMG website.
Click on "On-line Services" in the menu bar. Under the "For International Medical Graduates" banner, click on "OASIS" and then "Go to OASIS".
Once in the ECFMG/OASIS dashboard, select "ERAS support services" in the left column.
Then click "Upload" and select "Upload MSPE".
Select “Choose file” and search for the file in your computer or system.
Finally, click “upload file” and it will be done.
ECFMG will verify your MSPE in 5 business days approximately. There can be delays, however, and therefore try to have this document uploaded as soon as you have completed your medical school curriculum and at least a few weeks before applying to programs. After the verification process, you will get notified that your MSPE has been uploaded to your ERAS application.
We hope that this guide has helped you become more familiar with the MSPE, its importance in the grand scheme of things and how you can upload it to your ERAS application. If you have any questions, sound off below, and we'll reply as soon as we can. Cheers!
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